This article was published online in 2024
Robert Dean Bax (1925–2000), footballer, football coach, and bookmaker, was born on 23 March 1925 at Mannum, South Australia, son of Albert James Bax, railway fettler, and his wife Catherine Agnes, née Howard, a former schoolteacher. The family moved to Mount Isa, Queensland, in the boy’s early childhood. Educated at Mount Isa State School and as a boarder at St Teresa’s Agricultural College, Abergowrie, near Ingham, Bob (or Bobby and later also Baxie) was indentured as an electrician at age eighteen, working in Mount Isa’s mines.
Rugby league became Bax’s passion, and he played in the local competition until 1946 when Jack Reardon, a former international, spotted him and recommended him to Past Brothers Rugby League Football Club in the Brisbane competition. Bax then moved to Brisbane and worked as an electrician at the General Post Office. A half-back, he had a distinguished career playing for Brothers (1947–48, 1949–51, and 1953), being selected for the Brisbane Bulimba Cup side from 1948 to 1950. He left the city to captain-coach the Goondiwindi (1948), Fitzroy (a Rockhampton club) (1952), and Mitchell (1954) teams. In 1955 he was appointed as coach of Brothers’s first-grade team. Also a reserve-grade player, he would leave the field at half time to be ready to direct the firsts’ match.
Bax coached the team to five successive grand finals, of which it won two (1956 and 1958). Despite this impressive record, in 1959 he was dismissed, provoking conjecture about the reason. A Catholic, on 18 February 1950 at the Presbyterian Church, Mount Isa, he had married Isabella Ellen (Ishbel Helen) Fraser, a Burroughs adding machine operator. At a time of heightened sectarianism, his wife and others believed influential figures in the Catholic club disapproved of his marrying a Protestant. His son Robert later affirmed, however, that the cause was Bax’s objection to club officials entering the dressing room and interfering with his coaching. The Northern Suburbs Rugby League Football Club required a coach from 1960, and he was appointed.
With his new club, Bax had an outstanding record. Between 1960 and 1970 he took the first-grade team to nine grand finals, of which it won seven (1960–64, 1966, and 1969). He retired after the 1970 season. Intermittently (1966–68 and 1972), he held the additional post of coach of Brisbane’s representative team, which he guided to a memorable victory at home over Great Britain (1966). In 1971 and 1972 he coached the Queensland side, which was undefeated in a tour of New Zealand (1972). Resuming his former position with Norths in 1977 and 1978, he met with mixed success. He was highly regarded for his administrative skills as a member of Norths’ management committee (1961–82) and as president of the club (1969–87, 1990, and 1992–94), which honoured him with life membership (1970).
A conservative and astute punter, in the late 1950s Bax had set up as an illegal starting-price (SP) bookmaker. From 1965 he also held a licence to operate lawfully but lost it following the second of three convictions (1961, 1976, and 1978) for offences related to his illicit book. After the Fitzgerald inquiry into political and police corruption (1987–89), he and other SP bookmakers were charged with paying protection money to corrupt police; the charges were subsequently dropped. In the early 1970s, he had published Queensland’s Rugby League Review, a short-lived magazine. His rugby league column in Brisbane’s Sunday Mail ran for many years.
The master coaches Jack Gibson (a fellow SP ‘bookie’) and Wayne Bennett were among Bax’s many admirers. Gibson regarded him as ‘the greatest football brain’ he had encountered (Stand Up and Cheer 2008, 161). Bennett, who had played under him, sought his coaching advice and guidance until Bax’s death, calling him ‘my mentor, my critic, my coach and most importantly, my friend’ (Stand Up and Cheer 2008, 88). Bax studied his team members and what motivated them, developing a strong personal relationship with each. An innovator, he pioneered fitness tests; introduced the compilation of player performance statistics; and in 1969 lured an Australian rules player, Barry Spring, to Norths as full back, because of his ability to kick long-distance field goals, which were worth two points in that period. His shrewd tactics included a well-disguised ‘scissors move’ that bewildered the opposition’s defence and resulted in Norths scoring many tries. On the field, he stressed the importance of achieving physical dominance without foul play.
Bax was short in stature and, in middle age, somewhat stout. He was noted for his aphorisms and witticisms, once remarking of a speedy but not-very-intelligent winger: ‘Flies like a jet plane—unfortunately no pilot’ (Stand Up & Cheer 2008, 93). Outgoing, companionable, and generous, he was a popular and colourful Brisbane identity. He died on 11 March 2000 at Clayfield and was buried in Nudgee cemetery; more than a thousand people attended his funeral at Corpus Christi Church, Nundah. His wife and their two daughters, Debra and Tracey, and two sons, Robert and Murray, survived him. On the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Norths club in 2008, he was named coach of its greatest team; in 2022 he was chosen as coach of Brisbane’s greatest team.
Bax, Robert. Personal communication
Dick, Barry. ‘League Coaching Legend Dies at 74.’ Courier-Mail (Brisbane), 13 March 2000, 5
Mallory, Greg. Voices from Brisbane Rugby League: Oral Histories from the 50s to the 70s. Annerley, Qld: Published by the author, 2009
Stand Up & Cheer: 75 Years of Norths Devils. Albany Creek, Qld: Northern Suburbs Rugby League Football Club and Paul Crooks Advertising & Publishing, 2008
Greg Mallory, 'Bax, Robert Dean (Bob) (1925–2000)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/bax-robert-dean-bob-32884/text40957, published online 2024, accessed online 7 November 2024.
Supplied by family
23 March,
1925
Mannum,
South Australia,
Australia
11 March,
2000
(aged 74)
Clayfield, Brisbane,
Queensland,
Australia
Includes the religion in which subjects were raised, have chosen themselves, attendance at religious schools and/or religious funeral rites; Atheism and Agnosticism have been included.